Insurance & tech: Use of e-signatures expected to increase

A recent survey by LIMRA, ”Survey of tech tools: Use of e-signatures expected to increase,” reveals that 60 percent of insurance companies that sell their products through financial professionals use e-signatures. Short for electronic signature, e-signatures are used to validate that a person wrote a message, much like a regular, pen-to-paper signature.

Sometimes, in order to have an official e-signature, companies or organizations add extra levels of security to both grant and validate the person that is going to use that e-signature. This is common practice when filling out online applications.

The LIMRA survey also found that 20 percent of financial advisors plan to add this tool within a year and that 58 percent of companies use e-signatures for electronic applications.

“Prior LIMRA research has shown that consumers increasingly expect more of the process to be digital,” especially by Gen X and Gen Y consumers. And tools such as these, “Allow companies to process more business, in less time, and with more accuracy,” the report says.

Right now, the most common e-signature used is “click wrap” or what we know as the “I Accept” or “I Agree” buttons that are “clicked in the presence of a financial professional,” LIMRA says, with 52 percent of respondents saying that they use this type of e-signature. The second most common e-signature (49 percent usage) is a click wrap sent by email to the customer.